The rise of reverse mentoring in the Capital Region

When Meghan McCloskey experiences technical difficulties, she asks her 16-year-old for advice.

“When something doesn’t work, we call him,” the East Jewett resident says. “My iPad — if I can’t figure something out, I say, ‘Walter, what do I do?’… I think Walter called his grandmother and walked her through how to do FaceTime.”

Dan Pelusso of Amsterdam is a digital native. “I have all I can do to make sure my mom uses her iPhone correctly,” he says. “I save my photographs, but she has trouble finding hers.”

Skidmore College Professor Pat Ole’s students volunteer to help senior citizens with Facebook, email and automatic payments.

These Capital Region residents are describing reverse mentoring – a type of relationship that’s also found in work settings. “When I was first working in this industry, my manager relied on me for technological advice,” says UAlbany Associate Professor Sanjay Goel. “I was about 25 or 26.”

Today, Goel chairs the Information Technology Management Department at UAlbany’s School of Business. “What’s happening is that the newer generation is growing up with the technology,” he says. “The people who are growing up now are so much more adept; the older generation is relying pretty heavily on them. Even with the personal devices — simple user technology — a lot of parents and faculty are relying on the younger generation. That’s a good thing. Faculty and parents can teach a lot of things. There is no shame in learning from people you are teaching or from your kids. I think there’s a symbiosis here.”

Skidmore College Business Department Chair Caroline D’Abate has researched on-the-job mentoring for 10 years. “A good body of research has been emerging on reverse mentoring, particularly as the workplace has changed over the last decade or so,” she says. “Whether it’s because of the economy or because people are working longer or living longer, you have people coming back into the workforce who might be mentored by younger people or people at lower hierarchical levels than them. That younger- or lower-level person has a skill set. Sometimes it’s technological or they’ve worked in different parts of the industry for different firms. Therefore, they have a unique knowledge set that may be beneficial for someone at a higher level.”

She defines mentoring as “developmental interactions” between two or more individuals. “Sometimes there’s a mentor and a protégé,” she says. “It can happen in mentoring circles or laterally between two peers. Traditional downward mentoring is what most people are familiar with, but there’s also upward mentoring.”

(Photo: Rob Daly/Getty Images.)

For instance, she says, Skidmore pairs business majors with Capital Region businesses. The students act as consultants. “They are in touch with the millennial generation,” says D’Abate. “They are very much in touch with social media. They provide the businesses with how to market differently, how to utilize social media effectively, how to reach the millennial generation.”

“If a portion of work time is devoted to either giving or receiving mentoring, the organization is going to see a benefit,” says D’Abate. “At the end of the day, a lot of the research shows that mentoring makes a difference in key organizational outcomes like satisfaction and performance. Mentoring can be a key source of employee competitive advantage.”

One function mentoring can serve is skill development, D’Abate says. “Skill development can happen through collaboration, through helping the protégé set goals or resolve a particular problem,” she explains. “The mentor may do instructional teaching, provide feedback and give constructive criticism. The mentor might help on work assignments with task assistance or technical support.”

Mentoring can also provide psychosocial support, she says. “The mentor is providing some kind of acceptance to the protégé, befriending them in some way or calming them, providing an outlet for the learner to relieve their anxiety or stress,” D’Abate says. “There’s also confidence building for the protégé.”

The mentor “might advocate, introduce the mentee to certain people, and protect or socialize the mentee to the organization in some way,” she says.

Formal mentoring is less effective than informal mentoring, D’Abate cautions, so companies should “foster an organizational culture about continuous learning.”

“We want everyone mentoring,” she says. “We want everyone getting mentored so it’s not looked down upon when someone at a higher level is mentored. We want a culture where it’s valued, rewarded and celebrated, where supervisors really encourage people to spend time in mentoring relationships. You need to make sure you have people who have expertise, that you share knowledge about what skills people have, and that you allow some free time and some autonomy where people can find each other. Some organizations have a directory about who knows what. Some companies do speed mentoring like speed dating. You find someone you can connect with. You could have an inner and outer circle that rotates every two minutes. You might meet 30 different mentors.”

The best mentoring relationships occur over time in multiple interactions, D’Abate says. “How do you develop a strategy and cut costs and improve customer service if you’re not investing in the people — the human capital — to do all of that?” she asks. “It doesn’t have to be expensive; it’s just opportunities where the barriers to mentoring are taken out — giving them opportunities to meet.”